This invention relates to a control system for a rotor, or a rotor and vehicle combination such as a helicopter or compound helicopter, and in particular to a novel and improved gyroscopically stabilized control system and apparatus therefor.
An object of this invention is to utilize a rotor blade's flapping activity, caused by commanded or uncommanded load forces thereon, for stabilizing the rotor and the vehicle itself, and for alleviation of external disturbances encountered by the rotor or rotor/vehicle combination.
Another object of this invention is to automatically and instantaneously adjust, for such uncommanded external disturbances on a rotor or rotor/vehicle combination, the pitch of the blades without requiring pilot input to provide stabilization or load alleviation of the rotor system itself or its vehicle.
A further object of this invention is to utilize the deflection inherent in a cantilevered or flapping blade itself to properly precess a gyro which controls the attitude or rate and direction of change of attitude of the rotor and/or vehicle in which the gyro is situated, by adjusting the pitch of the blades to stabilize the rotor and/or its vehicle, without the necessity of a pilot's input to the gyro to change the vehicle's attitude prior to transmitting a correcting feathering motion (pitch) to the rotor blades.
Another object of this invention is to sense a true, pure signal from a blade under an external load force and by which correction of the blade's pitch is accomplished.
A further object of this invention is to eliminate detrimental noise resulting from contamination or impurity of a feedback signal from the blade's motions and loadings and which heretofore detrimentally accompanied control systems of the involved type.
Another object of this invention is to eliminate dictation of the size of a gyroscope by the size of its associated rotor and vehicle, and thereby design an independently sized gyro for any sized rotor system or its vehicle.
Other objects and advantages will become more fully apparent and appreciated by a full and complete reading of the following description, the accompanying drawing comprising 4 sheets, and the claims appended hereto.